The Best Sermon Ever

Read Matthew 5:1-6

While only the written Word of God is perfect and free from errors, still God has ordained the preaching of his Word, i. e., the careful explanation of its meaning with application to your lives, as one of the central activities for Christians in all ages and in all countries.

The art of listening, with all the distractions of our world (especially with Wi-Fi everywhere!) is nearing extinction. Yet that is one of the most important things a believer will ever do: learn to listen to God speak through sermons. The Spirit shapes us through these sermons. Have you ever counted the number of opportunities you have to listen and measured what God might do in you? The average 70-year old church goer may listen to several thousand sermons in his/her lifetime. An equivalent number of classroom hours would earn 4-5 separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without ever repeating the same course! Listening to God’s truth in sermons is what changes lives. How has your life changed based on thousands of hours of sermons?

In what country of 40 million Buddhists have only a few million evangelical Christians begun to permeate the culture? In South Korea, Christians take their faith seriously, and sermons actually matter, and change comes about. For all who want so intently to change culture . . . God’s Word through sermons does that. The same effect of preaching is being seen in Africa and China.

In our supposedly Christian nation, one in which humanist values now dominate, we desperately need to learn from our Korean, African, and Chinese brothers and sisters.

Why does a Buddhist culture have such an influence on it by Christians, when a supposedly Christian nation has so few vestiges of Christian morality? It is because they practice the Word of God. Jesus preached a sermon long ago and intended for it to have just those effects—to be taken seriously and practically. The Sermon on the Mount is given to us today to practice, not merely to read or even to marvel at its wisdom. It is to be lived. D. M. Lloyd-Jones maintains: “If only every Christian in the church today were living the Sermon on the Mount, the great revival for which we are praying and longing would already have started. Amazing and astounding things would happen; the world would be shocked, and men and women would be drawn and attracted to our Lord and Savior.”[1]

It’s hard to disagree with Lloyd-Jones that if we’d but obey this then our communities would be shocked and we could attract people to Christ and influence a secular culture like the minority group of Christians in Korea. J. C. Ryle said: “If you wish to know how Christians live and what their character is, how to walk with the Lord as a follower of Christ, then let us study and ponder the Sermon on the Mount.”[2]

Indeed, I want to offer a challenge to our readers. You are not required to be spiritual superstars; neither are you expected to be great theologians. This language is very simple. It is not demanded that you be particularly skilled; Christ provides the way of salvation and our Manual for living thereafter.

Jesus taught this Sermon on the Mount (the expression was first coined by St. Augustine) to his first disciples. I believe he desires his later disciples to heed its message also. If we wish to know what Jesus would emphasize in a Preaching-Teaching mission of 3-4 days only, I think he’d pass on these first truths of the first gospel that he gave in Matthew 5-7.

This sermon has been called the greatest psychology of human relationships ever even by non-Christians who don’t recognize the Savior. John Stott wrote: “The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian Counter-culture.” It lays out the difference between the Christian and non-Christian, the nominal church and the secular world. “Here,” he said, “is a Christian value-system, ethical standard religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, lifestyle and network of relationships—all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world.”[3]

Arthur Pink esteemed it in these words: “It may justly be called the key to the whole Bible, for Christ opens the sum of the Old and New Testaments.”[4] It is “A forecast and epitome of the entire oral ministry of Christ.” These three chapters require the devotion and attention of all believers. In these, we hear the “voice of the Chief Shepherd, the charge of the great Bishop and head of the church.” It is the Master speaking as “never a man spake.”

Since it follows the calling of the twelve, it has even been called “The Ordination Address to the Twelve.” It has also has been called “The Magna Carta of the Kingdom” and “The Manifesto of the King.” In sum, it is the constitution of the Christian’s life, desire, and character.

Moreover, nothing better shows us our absolute need for new birth and the Holy Spirit’s work within us than this sermon. And the more we seek to live in conformity to how Jesus wants us to live, the more blessed will be our lives. Dr. Lloyd-Jones put it succinctly: “If you want to be filled [with the Spirit], don’t seek some mystic blessing; don’t rush to meetings hoping you will get it. Face the Sermon on the Mount and its implications and demands, see your utter need, and then you will get it. It is the direct road to blessing.”[5]

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is a great anthology or assortment of Christ’s practical instruction: it contains some of the most frequently quoted statements of the Bible that should be familiar to us.

Jesus, like any good teacher is also attempting to cast out the negative. There is actually a very large heresy behind this Sermon that Jesus wanted to demolish for his disciples. Jesus wanted to attack this particular religious error so much that he devoted extensive time to it at the very outset of his ministry.  The error was Pharisaism.  “The Sermon on the Mount is an exhaustive discussion of Pharisaism. Christ expounds the Law [of God] against the tradition of the elders and against Pharisaic glosses and interpretations. It is the refutation of [one of] the greatest heresies of the ages, and the overthrow of [one of] the great bulwarks erected by Satan against the truth. . . . [Pharisaism is] that master stroke of cunning by which [Satan] substituted the deceitfulness of sin in place of holy living, and a refuge of lies in place of the Divine Law.”[6]

Jesus exposes and refutes the literalism, formalism, and hypocrisy of Pharisaism in this sermon. Literalism substitutes the letter of the law for its spirit. In the broader sense, literalism is a false basis for ethics and it destroys all real morality. It reduces God’s Law to a limiting factor for what we should do; as if when we meet it, we have done all we should do and no more. It does not see God’s law as an expression of his own holiness. It also produces self-righteousness because when people keep this law, they think their actions are the only important thing. Motives are minimized, and it becomes facile to minimize the debits and maximize the credits, and to end up with a balance largely in our own favor.

Literalism also excuses natural lusts under the umbrella that since many other commit sin, it must not be too wrong. Literalism denies that these lusts are controllable or that they have moral character. Once we justify immorality under the rubric that such is inevitable, it becomes a short step to downgrading all morality.

The theme of this sermon is the contrast between the man-centered righteousness of the Pharisees and the God-centered overflow of behavior among Jesus’ disciples.

This sermon is sometime seen as the map for building a progressive society. A common confusion associated with this is that we can produce the Kingdom of God and all troubles end if people live by this ethic. That, of course, overlooks the prerequisite of being born again before one can behave like a child of God. Such moralism disregards the First Beatitude.

Such a view contradicts the very spirit of this sermon. It is intended for all ages, for all disciples and not merely as a human-oriented common ethic. And there are many evasions of the Sermon on the Mount. We don’t want to see evasion of this message, but an invasion of this sermon.

There are some who mistakenly think that Christ in this sermon expounds a new and improved moral code. Some people think that the OT is “narrow, harsh, cruel, bigoted, imperfect, impure, and semi-barbaric, and that this is all corrected by Christ”[7] in this Sermon. They think that Christ here supersedes the moral teachings of the OT. But a careful study of both Old and New Testament morality and worship will show that the OT is quite full of mercy and grace; meanwhile the New Testament preserves elements of God’s wrath and judgment. These are not two different testamental plans of religion; the Old points precisely to Christ who fulfills it perfectly—not differently.

“Doctrine is the basis of morals. There can be no moral system that is not grounded in doctrine. If one is true, the other is sound; if one is false, the other is perverse and corrupt. If the doctrine is inadequate or variable, the moral system is vitiated to the same extent.”[8] Thus, if the OT doctrine is corrupt, all the ethics and other teachings founded upon it are corrupt.

Below are five reasons to mine this sermon for all its precious ore.

1. The Lord Jesus died to enable us to live the Sermon on the Mount. His death and sending the Holy Spirit makes it possible. At such a cost, this must be pretty important material.
2. Nothing shows the absolute need for the new birth, and the Holy Spirit and his work as the Sermon on the Mount. This sermon crushes our pride, drives us to our knees and shows to me my own utter spiritual inability. Only if I am a new person can I practice this. Thus the study of it leads me to the grace of the gospel.
3. It is a direct path for blessing. If you want to be blessed then go directly to the Beatitudes—not to every meeting, every Christian rally, or to each new podcast looking for a blessing. If you face the Sermon on the Mount you’ll find a more direct path to blessing.
4. If practiced, this will bring church revitalization. If our church would but understand and practice these three chapters what an impact on women’s ministry, Session, Worship, Choir Practice—every function and meeting of the church—and also to society and lost humanity.
5. It will help our evangelistic presentation. If someone hesitates to admit that he/she is a sinner we can point them to this sermon. Who can escape these mandates and their inner searchlight? Are any of us really living up to this? If not we’re sinners who need a Savior. Thus we should study it to know how to apply this in our witnessing.

With these reasons to study this sermon, before we launch into it, note one more thing.

The New Birth is Pre-requisite. Although Jesus never mentioned the phrase ‘re-birth’ within this sermon, He taught about it earlier and insisted that no one can live this unless first re-born. These standards are not attainable to the natural man, but only to those newly re-born children of God. Jesus spoke this sermon directly to those who were already his disciples. He had already taught John 3 to Nicodemus—first you must be born again (indispensable precondition). Six times in this sermon, he refers to listeners as special children of Heavenly Father. “It is wrong to ask anybody who is not first a Christian to try to live a practice [it]. . . to expect Christian conduct from a person who is not born-again is heresy.”[9]

Besides, as we consider Beatitude number one in the next installment, the poor in spirit are those who are self-consciously repentant sinners. The whole sermon assumes (though it is never made explicit) justification by faith—not salvation by works.

That Holy Spirit working in the “new creation” can effect this law as the ethic of the Christian church. This sermon assumes that once born-again people will certainly continue to grow in Christ-likeness. We are made “new creatures” and the old passes away. We become re-made after God’s image. Only after we’re re-constructed by God can this sermon become our ethic. But, as certainly as the Holy Spirit indwells every true believer, then the Holy Spirit can make this teaching to effectively become our marching orders, game-plan, or by-laws. Hence, this sermon in a description of Christian character. We could sum up: once a person is reconstructed, the Holy Spirit will bring your will and life into conformity with what is taught in this sermon. With this understanding then the Sermon on the Mount can change our lives, the life of this church. The words themselves, apart from Christ, are nothing but a devastating statement of God’s radical demands. Only in Christ “do these words of the law become the glorious gospel, promising that for every man, life can begin again.”[10] This sermon cannot possibly be practiced until we know the Proclaimer of the Sermon on the Mount. Then and only then, because he has born our sins away and inhabits his new creatures, can we practice what is here preached.